VERA Files announces with deep sorrow the demise of VERA Files co-founder and trustee Lourdes Estella- Simbulan. She was 54.
A full-time faculty member of the Journalism Department of the University of the Philippines-Diliman, Simbulan, more known as Chit Estella, was killed in a car accident in front of the UP Ayala TechnoHub on Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City at 6 p.m. today. A passenger bus rammed the taxi she was in.
She is survived by her husband, UP professor Roland Simbulan.
Simbulan, a graduate of journalism from UP Diliman and holder of a master’s degree in public management from the UP Open University, started her journalistic career as a reporter of the Manila Evening Post in the early 1980s. She joined Tempo and later Ang Pahayagang Malaya where she was a senior reporter.
She spent a short stint at the news desk of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1994 before she moved to Manila Times to become its managing editor. She was editor in chief of Pinoy Times, the Filipino-language tabloid that put out stories on the excesses of then president Joseph Estrada. Simbulan was also former editor of the Philippine Journalism Review Reports.
UPDATED, MAY 16: Simbulan will be cremated Tuesday morning at the Arlington Memorial Chapels and Crematory on Araneta Avenue, Quezon City. The UP community will offer mass, followed by a program, at Arlington 6 p.m. Monday. The UP College of Mass Communication will pay its tribute to Simbulan at the college auditorium at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
